Comments Off on Oddworld set to return thanks to Leeds based video game company

By Alex Rhodes

A Leeds based video game company will soon announce a release date for a new game that will hit stores worldwide.

Just Add Water will release Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty for a variety of gaming platforms later this year. The game is a remake of the critically acclaimed Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey which was originally released in 1998.

CEO of Just Add Water, Stewart Gilroy, 44, said: “The game is a complete remake from the ground up, we’re not using anything from the original game apart from the design. Every asset has been recreated.”

The game focuses on unlikely hero, Abe, and his escape from the diabolical RuptureFarms

One of the biggest changes is a massive graphics update but Stewart insists that differences go beyond appearance. He said: “It’s more than just graphics, there are significant design changes and a whole bunch of things we’ve improved.”

Just Add Water released a trailer for the game at the Game Developers Conference last week in San Francisco and on YouTube. Stewart said: “The reception was quite spectacular, I think we’ve received about 390,000 views in less than a week. It’s staggering frankly.”

Graphics fit for the 21st Century make New ‘n’ Tasty a visually stunning game

A major announcement sent ripples throughout the gaming world on Tuesday as it was revealed that social media giant Facebook had bought Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset. Stewart called the announcement surprising and said: “18 months ago Oculus managed to squeeze 2.3 million out of a Kickstarter fund and here they are now with nothing released, still heavily in development and yet they’ve been bought out for $2 billion.”

This is not Facebook’s first foray into the world of gaming, titles like Farmville and Mafia Wars have millions of users worldwide. Stewart said: “I personally detest that type of gaming, they’re games you play on your phone for five minutes when you’re on a train. I like my games to be story led with lots of adventure. So if Facebook turn Oculus into a casual gaming type of thing, I’ll personally have zero interest in it.”

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty will be released later this year for PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, Mac, PC and Linux.

WATCH: Gaming is regularly criticised for being too violent, Stewart talks about the use of violence in New ‘n’ Tasty and in the industry as a whole.